Earth Group Fashion Show

By Phoebe Bakeman

March 28th, 2025

The fast fashion industry has dominated society since its creation. The allure of a cute ten-dollar dress that you can get shipped to your door in a week? The latest jeans, already distressed and tastefully ripped? 

Fashion in 2025 is cheap and easy to get, but that means that people end up having more than they need. Montpelier High School’s Earth Group set out to combat this waste with a clothing swap and fashion show. Students brought in unwanted clothes, to be displayed on the runway and then given a new home. 

The second annual fashion show was considered a success by Beatrice Curtin, one of the members of Earth Group. 

“I think it went great,” she said, “the goal is to get information out in a fun way, so that people are interested in what we have to say.”

In an era where climate change is changing our environment in drastic ways, Earth Group sent an important message. While students modeling the clothes strutted across the auditorium stage, a slideshow behind them showed pictures of rivers choked with pollutants. 

Earth Group explained that textile manufacturing contributes a fifth of global industrial water pollution. 

Polyester, a popular material used in fast fashion products, takes twice as much energy as cotton and amounts to 35 percent of microplastics in the ocean. The manufacturing and transportation processes create carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more powerful than CO2. This shows that switching to more sustainable clothing manufacturing methods is imperative in stopping climate change. 

According to Curtin, the fashion show was successful in its goal to reduce the amount of clothing waste our school puts out, and spread awareness about the influence of fast fashion on the climate.